The University of California Board of Regents will likely take a
long-awaited vote on a proposed increase in student fees when they
convene at their bi-monthly meeting in mid-July, according to the
UC Office of the President.
The regents were supposed to vote on a fee increase at their May
meeting after Gov. Gray Davis’ state budget draft cut a base
sum of $300 million from the UC for 2003-2004. It became clear
that, even with substantial cuts in other programs, students would
shoulder part of the financial burden.
However, the vote was delayed pending further information on the
state budget. Instead, the regents voted unanimously to support
Davis’ budget as it was presented in its May Revision with
hopes that later revisions would not further cut the
university’s budget.
With the state budget deadlocked due to bipartisan squabbling,
and the governor preoccupied with a Republican-driven recall
effort, it is not certain that the state will have a budget by the
time the regents meet at UC San Francisco from July 16 to 17.
But the regents will most likely vote on the fee increase
anyway, said Hanan Eisenman, a press aide for UCOP.
“We do expect to go to the July regents meeting with a fee
proposal,” he said. “We want to give students
sufficient notice of fee levels so they can adjust for the winter
and spring quarters.”
The big question for the regents now is just how much of a fee
increase will hit students’ wallets.
The regents will be looking at a possible increase of $795,
which would be on top of a $495 increase made during the spring
quarter of 2003. This would bring the average level of
undergraduate student fees to $4,629.
Given miscellaneous fees that individual campuses charge,
undergraduates will pay an average of $5,082 in fees.
However, additional proposals in the state legislature could cut
the UC’s budget by an additional $80 to $400 million, which
would be equivalent to the total state funding for UC Berkeley.
An increased cut in funding to the university would also
increase the amount student fees are raised, a scenario that
Eisenman said was “possible,” but also a scenario with
which the UC would not be pleased.
“The UC would be very concerned with further cuts. We feel
we’ve taken very substantial cuts in our programs
already,” he said.
It is not yet clear if the outpouring of student sentiment will
be as strong at the July regents meeting as it was at the May one,
when over 100 students from six different UC campuses protested
raising student fees, much to the chagrin of the regents and the UC
Police Department.
Yousef Tajsar, a fourth-year political science student at UCLA
who helped organize the May protests, said student leaders from
various universities will meet to discuss a course of action for
July.
Tajsar added that students were “very disappointed”
that the regents had turned down student requests to hold their
meeting at UCLA, instead deciding to hold all but one of their
meetings next year at UC San Francisco, a campus that protesters
have called remote and inaccessible to students.
“It’s really unfortunate that instead of them trying
to improve on that situation, they decided to go against what
(students) were saying,” he said.